To Glorify God: Beginnings, Endings, and the Face of God
To Glorify God
Some opening lines make all other openers sound trite. When Moses wrote “In the beginning,” every writer since that time has been looking for a second-best line to start his book. When Dickens stumbled upon “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” no one else could ever start their book with such a lucid and stark contrast. It would’ve sounded cliché.
In much the same way, the authors of the Westminster Shorter Catechism began their work with the question that tops all questions: “What is the chief end of Man?” It’s one of the most important questions a person could ask. And although every theologian before 1648 had thought about it, now we can’t escape this enduring question and its famous answer – “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”
The question the catechism asks is the kind of question that Leory Forlines called one of the “inescapable questions of life.” It’s the kind of thing that keeps angsty teens up at night. It’s the question that sends middle-aged men on long car rides. It’s the sort of question preschool strawberry shortcake princesses ask to avoid bedtime. In other words, it is the question of purpose and meaning behind our existence.
Question: Why am I here? Answer: To Glorify God.
For my money, those bad-to-the-bone Puritans at Westminster did an excellent job with this question and answer. (Historical note: They were cool because they were busy destroying the power of King Charles I, especially his influence on the church, all the while listening to George Thoroughgood.) The Westminster Assembly told us that we exist to glorify him and to find our joy in him. We exist because of God and for God. It is a great summary of biblical teaching, and it gets to the heart of the Christian tradition on the subject. (I made up the George Thoroughgood part).
Unfortunately, some people have run with this concept a little too far. John Piper believes that God created us so that he could receive glory from us. This sounds good, but it gets a little strange. He explains this by arguing that as the supreme being in the universe, it is not selfish to desire to be glorified by his creation. For Piper, God acts in Scripture “for the sake of his name.” (Isaiah 48:9) God creates people and saves people from sin so that he would receive greater glory from his creatures.
Perhaps the distinction here is too subtle, but it seems to me that there is a significant difference between saying “My purpose as a human in life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever” and God saying, “I create and save people for the purpose of receiving glory.” Piper and his peeps are saying the latter.
In their attempt to make Him sovereign over everything, they ironically make Him come across as needy and dependent on humans. He acts for Himself rather than graciously for us. He is motivated by his own glory rather than his love. His saving work becomes a means of self-fulfillment. He is secretly selfish, and that is okay because it is good for God to seek his own interest.
I hope Piper is smart enough and theologically sound enough to not draw these conclusions, but I’ve heard it more than once from people under his influence. I understand that they are trying to make God rather than man central, but Scripture itself describes God’s motivation for redeeming us as love (John 3:16 and Ephesians 1:4-5). Even when God acts for the sake of his name, it is because he wants to increase his reputation so that more people would be redeemed by his love. His glory and his love for us are not a zero-sum game. If we contrast God’s love and God’s glory, we’ve lost the plot.
A better way to see this is to say that God made us to share in his divine love. He freely made us in order to grant us his love. We were made to partake in this divine love in our own small way through union with Christ. As we experience his love, we glorify him. Our purpose is to glorify Him because it is a fitting response to His love. We enjoy him as the benefit of receiving his love in Christ.
Our purpose is to glorify and enjoy; His purposes for creating us are ineffable, but we can say with biblical certainty that it is an extension of his love. We are not necessary. We exist at his pleasure. He would be glorious, fulfilled, and eternally joyful even if we never existed. We exist to receive his love, not because he needs to give someone love, but because He wants to. Our response is to glorify and enjoy.
To See God: The Classical View
Think with me a little more about humankind’s purpose. Classical theologians like Augustine and Aquinas taught that the telos (or end goal) of our existence was receiving the “beatific vision,” which they described as seeing the essence of the eternal God.
“Beatific” comes from the Latin word for blessed. It is most clearly seen in Matthew 5:8, where the “Pure in heart” are “blessed” because they will “see God.” When we speak of the chief end of man, we inevitably speak of our telos or our eschatological future. Augustine, Aquinas, and nearly every theologian for over a thousand years, spoke of the beatific vision as our telos. This vision doesn’t disagree with the Westminster Shorter Catechism because to see God is to enjoy him, but it does provide a slightly different emphasis.
Will we see God? Doesn’t the Bible tell us that God dwells in “inapproachable light” and that no one has seen him or can see him? (I Tim 6:16) Didn’t Moses only see the “back of God” because he couldn’t behold his face? (Ex 33:20). For classical theologians, these verses are what made the beatific vision so beatific. We as believers will be allowed something that others could only dream of. We will see God. This is only possible after we are freed from sin, resurrected, and glorified. Our telos is the beatific vision.
John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” describes being in eternity “ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun.” If we think of this kind of prolonged eternal existence, it may seem a little static or even monotone, but this is only when we forget the object of our blessed vision. Thinking about eternity is why Aquinas imagined a continued movement toward God, a greater sense of vision of who the Creator is, a movement, as C.S. Lewis said, “further up and further in.” Finite mankind cannot comprehend the infinite God, but over time and through God’s continued grace, we may increasingly see God.
New Creation: The Modern Emphasis
As amazing as this sounds, there are a couple of big questions that are hard to answer with this perspective of our eternity. If God is a spiritual being, what does it mean to “see” Him? Isn’t sight a physical activity? Aquinas believed that the beatific vision was spiritual or intellectual (which he saw as essentially the same things). This is a reasonable answer, but modern biblical scholarship has challenged a version of Christian eschatology that disconnects the spiritual from the physical. Scholars like N.T. Wright, Alistair McGrath, and Randy Alcorn have stressed that the New Testament continually teaches that the resurrection of the dead and New Creation are our future hope.
We will be given a resurrected, glorified body, like the risen Jesus Christ, who is the “firstfruits” of our resurrection. (I Cor 15:20) We will not simply spiritually gaze upon the divine essence, but we will enjoy a new creation that is fitting for our human design. God made us with bodies and souls and never desired us to have one without the other. Our future is physical, not simply a spiritual beatific vision.
I sympathize with Wright and the modern scholarly consensus on this topic. It makes the most sense of the whole of Scripture. It also jives with the Apostles’ Creed that speaks of the “resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” I personally have found this view more comforting than a disembodied spiritual existence when experiencing deep personal loss. To be fair to Augustine and Aquinas, they affirmed the resurrection of the dead and they didn’t deny the essence of what Wright has argued for. Their emphasis, however, seems to distort the biblical picture. It seemed to elevate the spiritual aspects of eternity, making the physical superfluous.
To See Jesus is to See God
So, is our eschatological goal to see God’s essence with our intellect/soul? Or is it enjoying his new creation in our glorified spiritual bodies? Can both somehow be true? Can we have a doctrine of beatific vision and still hold to a robust theology of New Creation? I believe we can, and I think the answer to the dilemma is found, unsurprisingly, in the person of Jesus Christ.
When Revelation 22 describes the New Creation as a restored Eden, it adds that “No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. (v3-4) Whose face will they see? Is it God’s or the Lamb’s?
Revelation 4 and 5 already taught us that that is a trick question. The Lamb is the Lion. He is on the throne where the four living creatures worship him as “worthy.” God’s throne in chapter 4 is the Lamb’s throne in chapter 5. If we bring John 14:9 into the mix—“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”—we can also say that their face is the same. Their throne is the same, and their face is the same. To see Jesus is to see God.
To steal a line from Abraham Lincoln, “it is altogether fitting and proper” that the solution to this theological dilemma would be the incarnation. How can mankind see the infinite God? It is the ultimate act of grace. The infinite God becomes an infant man. He brings divine joy, love, and immortality (to name just a few attributes) into human life. In Christ, he unites his life to our life. In this divine-human union, God has a human face and he always will.
As Mark Lowry wisely noted in his famous Christmas song, “Mary Did You Know?” when Mary kissed her little baby, she kissed “the face of God.” Mary experienced a small glimpse of the beatific vision on the first Christmas, but his disciples experienced more on the mountain of transfiguration.
When our resurrected physical eyes see the face of the risen Christ, we will truly have seen the face of God. I believe this is THE beatific vision. I believe it is beatific enough for any man, woman, or child. Even so, I think we have reason to say, based on the infinite nature of God, the boundlessness of his love and grace, that we will grow to “see” his divine essence more and more.
Our resurrected bodies are called “spiritual bodies” in 1 Corinthians 15. Our vision of Christ will be more than physical; it will be spiritual. Over the centuries of seeing the face of our King Jesus, our spirits will grow in their ability to see our God. In doing so, we will become more like Christ because we will see him as he is. (I John 3:2) In other words, I think there is good reason to believe that our resurrected existence and spiritual vibrancy during year one of eternity will seem basic when we are going into year three thousand.
To be blessed
As mentioned above, a key text for the beatific is Matthew 5, which is typically called the beatitudes. These famous lines inject kingdom hope into our present reality. They are rightly understood as examples of the already-not-yet eschatology we see in Jesus’ teachings. The Kingdom is here in the teachings and miracles of Christ, but it is not yet fully realized. The poor in spirit possess the kingdom now, but the meek are waiting to inherit the earth.
The lines of the beatitudes have different shades of meaning, but they are parallel lines pointing to the same truth. The subjects are somewhat synonymous—poor in spirit, mournful, meek, merciful, etc. The promises made to these blessed ones are similarly synonymous. They are experienced now, but their culmination is our future hope. These promises are the possession of the kingdom, comfort in mourning, inheritance of the earth, being satisfied with righteousness, receiving mercy, being called children of God, and seeing God.
This is New Creation type language. It points to the consummation of all things—the end of mourning, the kingdom of righteousness. In this reading, seeing God and inheriting the earth are parts of the same reality. Our resurrection and New Creation are linked to the beatific vision. Because God himself in Christ dwells with us in the new creation (Rev 21), we will see the face of God (Rev 22).
As we close, we should reflect a little more on who is promised the beatific vision. Jesus tells us that “the pure in heart will see God.” (Matt 5:8) Thinking about our future hope should challenge our current outlook. We all know our hearts are not as pure as they should be. Christ, grant us a pure heart. Create a pure heart inside of us. (Psalm 51:10). Through your grace, may we be made into the kind of people who can see the face of God.
- To Glorify God: Beginnings, Endings, and the Face of God - July 23, 2026
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